Profile: Dinesh D’Souza

Dinesh D’Souza was a participant or observer in the following events:

The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), publishes the names of the officers of Dartmouth College’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), along with material that had been stolen from the GSA’s confidential files. Many students, faculty members, administrators, and family members did not know that the “outed” students were gay until they read the article in the Review. One outed student reportedly contemplates suicide over his exposure. Review founding editor Greg Fossedal later says, “I felt terrible about it,” and editor Dinesh D’Souza says he and his fellow editors did not know that the GSA had an exemption from the university over making its officers’ names public. According to D’Souza, he merely wanted to attack the secrecy of the funding of the GSA, and accuses the organization of using university money for “gay parties, gay orgies, or whatever.” [Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006] In 1984, the Review will be investigated by the state of New Hampshire for allegedly wiretapping a GSA meeting and printing a transcript of the audio recording (see 1984).

The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), runs an article opposing affirmative action that many feel is blatantly racist. The article is titled “Dis Sho’ Ain’t No Jive, Bro,” written by former Review chairman Keeney Jones. The article is the third in a series of attacks on affirmative action by Jones; the earlier articles featured Jones wishing he could medically darken his skin so he could get into medical school, and his claim that he was taking speech lessons to learn how to speak “black.” This article is written entirely in Jones’s version of “black dialect,” and features the following selection: “Dese boys be sayin’ dat we be comin’ to Dartmut’and not takin’ the classics. You know, Homa, Shakesphere; but I hes’ dey all be co’d in da gound, six feet unda, and whatcha be askin’ us to learn from dem? We culturally ‘lightened, too. We be takin’ hard courses in many subjects, like Afro-Am studies, women’s studies, and policy studies. And who be mouthin’ ‘bout us not bein’ good road? I be practicly knowin’ ‘Roots’ cova to cova, ‘til my mine be boogying to da words! And I be watchin’ the Jeffersons on TV ‘til I be blue in da face.” Upon receiving the article, Review board member Jack Kemp (R-NY), a Republican congressman, resigns from the board, saying Kenney’s article “relied on racial stereotypes” and undoubtedly offended many readers. “I am even more concerned that others found in it some support for racist viewpoints,” Kemp continues, and concludes: “I do not want my name to appear in your paper. I am concerned that the association of my name with the Dartmouth Review is interpreted as an endorsement and I emphatically do not endorse the kind of antics displayed in your article.” The Review appears unmoved by Kemp’s resignation, with editors saying they hope to replace him with televangelist Jerry Falwell. Editor Dinesh D’Souza says the paper bears no responsibility for any allegations of racism, and tells a New Hampshire reporter, “It is not the Dartmouth Review but the Afro-American Society which is the primary cause of racial tension on campus.” The undergraduate council and the faculty later votes to condemn the Review for creating a racially divisive atmosphere; Dartmouth’s president will write a letter saying the Review performs “offensive practices,” but that the issue cannot be solved by “violence or intolerance.” [Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006]

President Reagan and Dartmouth Review editor Dinesh D’Souza, 1988. [Source: Exiled Online (.com)]The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), publishes a satirical piece called “Grin and Beirut,” that compares an Israeli settlement in West Beirut to a temporary structure just erected by Jewish students at Dartmouth to celebrate the harvest and saying it was built on “the West Bank of College Hall.” The structure, known as a sukkah, is where the students gather for meals during the eight-day Succoth holiday. “The Zionists have gone too far with the erection of a ceremonial ‘sukkah’ settlement on the West Bank of College Hall,” the Review writes. Two days later, unidentified vandals destroy the structure. Many Dartmouth students and faculty members believe the Review’s apparent anti-Semitism incited the vandalism, including a rabbi with the university. Even the conservative Manchester Union-Leader, one of New Hampshire’s staunchest press supporters of the Review, criticizes the Review for its writings. One of the article’s co-authors says he regrets writing the piece, and the Review publishes an apology saying that it is “committed to fighting not only vandalism but also the psychological bigotry that can precipitate it.” [Boston Globe, 10/5/1990; Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006] In 2006, the Dartmouth Free Press will write that Review staffers may have destroyed the sukkah. The reporter will note that any contrition or commitment to “fighting vandalism [and] psychological bigotry” was not in evidence in later years, when Review staffers used sledgehammers to destroy shanties built by students as part of protests against apartheid in South Africa. [Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006] The Review is currently edited by Dinesh D’Souza, who will go on to become a policy adviser in the Reagan administration and a prominent conservative speaker and pundit. [Know Your Right-Wing Speakers: Dinesh D'Souza, 2/25/2005]

The Dartmouth Review, a conservative weekly student newspaper funded by off-campus right-wing sources (see 1980), publishes a front-page story proclaiming an “Exclusive Report on the GSA,” the Gay Straight Alliance. In 1981, Review editors had published the names of GSA officers, many of whom wished to keep their homosexuality a secret (see 1981). This article features a transcript of a private GSA meeting, recorded by Review staffer Teresa Polenz, who was sent by Review editor Laura Ingraham. The accompanying illustration depicts a man peering over a bathroom stall; Ingraham’s accompanying prose calls the GSA “cheerleaders for latent campus sodomites.” The state of New Hampshire opens an investigation into whether Polenz had violated wiretapping laws, an investigation that is later dropped when the New Hampshire Supreme Court hands down a ruling in an unrelated wiretapping case. Dartmouth College chooses not to discipline any students, and merely issues a request that the Dartmouth community “censure” the Review for its “insensitivity.” The Review will display little sensitivity towards gays, often referring to them as “sodomites.” In 1997, Ingraham, who has become a prominent conservative talk radio host and pundit, will write an article for the Washington Post recanting her views on homosexuals, saying she changed her mind in light of her brother revealing himself as gay (see April 1997). In 2006, former Review editor and conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza will say that while the Review was never racist (see March 15, 1982 and 1983) or anti-Semitic (see October 1982, November 9-10, 1988, and October 4, 1990), it could at times edge towards espousing homophobia: “[T]his antigay thing is a little bit tricky,” D’Souza will say, and add that the Review sometimes published comments about gays he wishes it had not. However, he will say, “It’s not clear the Review’s target was homosexuals per se.” [Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006; Huffington Post, 6/9/2008]

Almost 2,500 protesters gather on the Dartmouth College green to protest the conservative, off-campus Dartmouth Review, a student newspaper given to extremes of racial and political rhetoric (see 1980). The protest is sparked by the Review’s recent publication of a selection of Nazi propaganda on Yom Kippur, one of the highest of Jewish holy days. The selection, printed on the paper’s masthead, was from Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, and read: “I therefore believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator: By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord’s work.” The protest is led by Dartmouth president James Freedman, and made up of a wide swath of students, faculty, and alumni. “This has been a week of infamy for the Dartmouth community,” Freedman says. “The Dartmouth Review has consistently attacked blacks because they are black, women because they are women, homosexuals because they are homosexuals, and Jews because they are Jews,” he says; two years before, the Review had compared Freedman, who is Jewish, to Hitler, and compared his policies to the Holocaust (see November 9-10, 1988). College trustees call the Hitler publication “a criminal act of sabotage.” Trustee Accuses University President of Using Incident to 'Incite Hatred' - The Boston Globe describes Review trustee and former editor Dinesh D’Souza, a former policy adviser in the Reagan administration, as both “contrite and combative” over the incident. D’Souza apologizes for the publishing of the Hitler selection, then moments later accuses Freedman of using the incident to incite hatred against the Review. “This case is Dartmouth’s Tawana Brawley,” he says, referring to the 1987 case of a young African-American woman who some believe falsely accused several white men of raping her. “You have a sabotage, a hoax, a dirty trick that is being ruthlessly and cynically exploited by the college leadership in order to ruin the lives of many innocent students. President Freedman has emerged as the Al Sharpton of academia.” (Sharpton, a New York pastor and civil rights leader, was one of Brawley’s most public advocates.) Protesters line up one after another to urge the college to repudiate the newspaper. Dartmouth officials say that the newspaper has damaged the college’s reputation and diminished the school’s ability to recruit top students and faculty, particularly minorities. Religion professor Arthur Hertzberg calls the Hitler quote another “act of ongoing hooliganism” in a string of politically and racially explosive actions by the Review, and tells the crowd: “This is not a hating college. This is not an anti-Semitic college. This is not an institution of infamy. It is a community of warmth and love.” Professor: Responsibility Lies with Conservative Funders - Hertzberg says his quarrel is not with “the 20 or 30 misguided young people who edit the Review.” Rather, he says, it is with the prominent conservatives who support the paper. The Review is financed mostly by off-campus, conservative organizations and foundations; it has an annual budget of some $150,000, and faces high legal bills. Hertzberg says the paper’s key backers include former Treasury Secretary William Simon; former Chase Manhattan Bank chairman George Champion; National Review editor William F. Buckley Jr.; and conservative commentator and former Nixon speechwriter Patrick Buchanan. “My quarrel is with those out there who put up hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with which to contaminate this campus,” Hertzberg says. “They should be ashamed of themselves.” Board Member Accuses Liberals of Planting Hitler Quote - Review advisory board member George Gilder, a conservative economist, says the Hitler quote was planted by someone who wishes the newspaper ill: “Do you think any conservative in the world would deliberately put that into the magazine? It’s obviously an attack by somebody who infiltrated the ranks.” Gilder says Freedman and liberals at Dartmouth are using the Hitler incident “to try to kill the Review, just as they try to kill conservatism whenever it rises up on campus.” Editor in chief Kevin Pritchett collects the issues of the newspaper, and, with three other senior staffers, publishes an open letter denying any involvement in publishing the quote and accusing a staff “insider” of somehow inserting it. Review supporters in New York and Washington, DC, demand that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) conduct an investigation to find the “saboteur,” and Review adviser Jeffrey Hart releases a written response that attacks Freedman for falsely accusing the Review of racism (see March 15, 1982, 1983, and August 2002) and intolerance (see 1981, 1984, 1985, and July 1990). [Boston Globe, 10/5/1990; Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006] Days later, Simon publishes an editorial in the New York Times decrying the Review’s reference to Hitler, but calling the publication of the quote “sabotage” and saying: “[s]omeone secretly gained access to the production process.… Since the slur was deviously implanted in a section that remains unchanged from week to week, the subterfuge eluded the proofreaders.” He describes Pritchett as “horrified” by the incident, says that any accusations of anti-Semitism on the Review’s part are “preposterous,” and accuses Freedman of orchestrating a protest against the Review “that quickly metamorphosed into an instrument of hate—hate directed against student journalists who, as a result, suffered death warnings, threats of violence, as well as mean-spirited accusations.” The Review serves to “question, challenge, and even deride the dominant liberal orthodoxy on the campus, exposing its hypocrisies,” Simon writes, and calls any attempt to call the Review to account “political opportunism.” [New York Times, 10/20/1990]Investigation Finds Quote Included by Staff, Editors - The ADL will indeed conduct an investigation, and will find that the Hitler quote was from a well-thumbed book in the Review’s office. It will conclude that a Review staffer had inserted the quote with the knowledge and apparent complicity of the senior editors. The ADL will call the publication of the quote “obviously an anti-Semitic act,” and write, “Prior acts of the Review and the past conduct of its members have contributed, the commission believes, to the creation of an environment which condoned and even encouraged a member of the Review to include the offensive Hitler quote.” The investigation notes that the Review has frequently published other offensive comments such as “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” and “genocide means never having to say you’re sorry.” History of Anti-Semitism - The Review has a history of anti-Semitic publishings (see October 1982 and November 9-10, 1988). D’Souza says Review trustees have repudiated such actions, which he calls the work of unpolished and overzealous staffers who sometimes run the Review like “a half-baked, ramshackle student paper.” Review President, Contributors Resign over Furor - C. Tyler White, president of the Review, will soon resign in protest. “I cannot allow the Review to ruin my life any further,” he will write. “The official Review response, which I co-signed and helped distribute, avoids the main thrust of the issue. It does not emphasize our sorrow in this dreadful act of malice, nor does it claim responsibility for letting it reach newsprint.… The editor in chief has failed in his job, and now we must wear the albatross of anti-Semitism because he won’t take responsibility for the issue’s contents.” Review contributors David Budd and Pang-Chun Chen resign along with White, writing, “We are conservatives, but we are not Nazis.” Budd writes that the Review’s apology implied “let’s put the blame on someone else.” Congressional Involvement - US Representative Chester Atkins (D-MA) delivers a letter concerning the incident to Freedman, accusing the Review of “fomenting hatred and intolerance.” The letter is signed by 84 of Atkins’s fellow Congress members. Atkins is running for re-election against a Review board member, John MacGovern. Atkins says MacGovern should step down as a board member; MacGovern refuses, saying the Review’s senior editors are not responsible for the Hitler quote. [Boston Globe, 10/5/1990; Dartmouth Free Press, 9/20/2006]

CNN announces that conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza is a new political analyst for the network. D’Souza became active in conservative politics and punditry as an editor of the Dartmouth Review in the early 1980s, where he authored and published numerous inflammatory articles reviling, among others, blacks, Jews, and gays (see 1981, March 15, 1982, October 1982, and 1983). From Dartmouth, D’Souza went to the White House, where he served as a senior domestic policy analyst in the Reagan administration. He has served as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, and published a number of books, including 1995’s inflammatory The End of Racism, which progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters described as advancing the idea that “low-income black people are basically ‘pathological’ and that white racism really isn’t racism at all, just a logical response to this ‘pathology.’” D’Souza’s Web site “argues that the American obsession with race is fueled by a civil rights establishment that has a vested interest in perpetuating black dependency”; in a 1995 Wall Street Journal op-ed, he argued that “[t]he best way for African-Americans to save private sector affirmative action may be to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Two African-American conservatives, Glenn Loury and Robert Woodson, resigned from AEI after the publication of The End of Racism and another racially objectionable book, The Bell Curve, by AEI fellow Charles Murray. [Media Matters, 6/8/2004]

A portion of the Forbes magazine cover featuring Dinesh D’Souza’s article on President Obama. [Source: Forbes magazine / PBS]In a cover story for Forbes magazine, conservative author and pundit Dinesh D’Souza claims that President Obama is using the Oval Office to pursue Kenyan anti-colonial policies once advocated by his father, Barack Obama Sr., a Harvard-trained economist and Luo tribesman from Kenya. D’Souza has a long history of race-baiting and using inflammatory rhetoric (see March 15, 1982, October 1982, October 4, 1990, and June 5, 2004). [Forbes, 9/27/2010] The story is loosely based on D’Souza’s upcoming book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage. [Washington Post, 9/16/2010] It is dated September 27, 2010, but is published on the Internet two weeks earlier. After tarring Obama as “the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history” and a strong advocate of expanding the federal government into all aspects of America’s commercial existence, D’Souza turns to his perception of Obama’s “strange” foreign policy. He cites several instances of Obama’s stated intention to reach out to Muslims across the globe, calling these initiatives “anomal[ies],” and proposes an explanation: Obama does not hold to the American dream, in any form, but instead hews to what D’Souza characterizes as the “Kenyan” dreams of his father, who D’Souza says was a champion of anticolonialism. The elder Obama advocated that native Kenyans “control the economic means of growth” in their country, D’Souza quotes him as writing in 1965, and also wrote, “We need to eliminate power structures that have been built through excessive accumulation so that not only a few individuals shall control a vast magnitude of resources as is the case now.” Obama, D’Souza writes, is following his father’s policies in his governance. “It may seem incredible to suggest that the anticolonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. is espoused by his son, the president of the United States,” D’Souza writes. “That is what I am saying. From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America’s military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father’s position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America’s power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe’s resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet. For Obama, the solutions are simple. He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West. And here is where our anticolonial understanding of Obama really takes off, because it provides a vital key to explaining not only his major policy actions but also the little details that no other theory can adequately account for.” D’Souza cites Obama’s support for offshore oil drilling in Brazil, his support for repealing the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, and his refusal to consider nationalizing American financial or health care institutions as “evidence” that he intends “to decolonize these institutions, [to bring] them under the government’s leash.” D’Souza goes even farther, accusing Obama of idolizing the 9/11 terrorists as anticolonial heroes whose acts were justified by their ideology; D’Souza cites Obama’s support for the building of a Muslim community center several blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, and his support for the release of one of the Lockerbie bombers on medical grounds, as “evidence” of his favoring of Islamist terrorists. Finally, D’Souza cites the statements of one of Obama’s grandfather’s wives, Sarah Obama, and Obama’s own writings about weeping at his father’s grave in Kenya as conclusive evidence of Obama’s secret anticolonial ideology. “Obama takes on his father’s struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause,” D’Souza writes. “He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.‘s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.‘s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son’s objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father’s struggle becomes the son’s birthright.” D’Souza calls colonialism a “dead issue,” and terms Obama “the last anticolonial.” [Forbes, 9/27/2010] Many conservatives have long accused Obama of being un-American because of his Kenyan ancestry (see February 25, 2008, August 1, 2008 and After, October 8-10, 2008, June 25, 2009, June 29, 2009, and August 11, 2009). D’Souza’s article will be lambasted by a wide swath of media figures (see September 12, 2010 and After) and will be shown to be riddled with factual errors (see September 16, 2010). It will be praised by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is widely believed to be pursuing the 2012 Republican presidential nomination (see September 12, 2010 and After). [Media Matters, 9/12/2010]

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker and an apparent candidate for the presidency in 2012, tells the conservative National Review that President Obama only pretends to be a “normal” American, but in reality is driven by his belief in “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.” Gingrich cites a recent article by conservative author Dinesh D’Souza (see September 12, 2010), calling D’Souza’s insight into Obama’s behavior “stunning… [the] most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.… What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.… This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president. I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating—none of which was true.… In the Alinksy [Saul Alinsky, a liberal community organizer] tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve.… He was authentically dishonest.” The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters calls Gingrich’s comments the latest in a long line of “not-so-subtle race baiting” by right-wing media figures. Gingrich is a frequent guest on Fox News. [Media Matters, 9/12/2010] White House press secretary Robert Gibbs accuses Gingrich of “trying to appeal to the fringe.” In response, Gingrich tells the Daily Caller that his own remarks “seemed to touch some kind of irrational nerve on the left.” [Washington Post, 9/16/2010] Days later, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson asks if Gingrich is “just pretending to have lost his mind, or has he actually gone around the bend?” Robinson answers his own question: “His lunacy certainly seems genuine enough. It’s one thing to be a rhetorical bomb-thrower, as Gingrich has long fancied himself, and another to lob damp squibs of pure nonsense into the fray. The man’s contributions to the public discourse have become increasingly unhinged.” Robinson calls Gingrich’s assertions about Obama’s supposed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior” “bizarre.” If Gingrich is indeed rational, Robinson continues, then he is probably attempting to promote the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama is not a US citizen, but instead “foreign, exotic, alien, somehow not American.” Moreover, Gingrich is trying to promote a much larger conspiracy theory: “that American democracy—indeed, the whole Anglo-American-Judeo-Christian enterprise—is under attack in a titanic clash of civilizations. In this view, we are threatened most acutely by the Islamic civilization. But we must also be on guard against the ‘Sinic’ civilization of China, the ‘Hindu’ civilization of India, and assorted others. This analysis was developed by Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard professor who died in 2008—and who said he never intended his work to be read as a battle plan. Gingrich seems to believe that our culture and values are also threatened from within—by black and brown people who demand that they, too, be given a voice in defining that culture and those values.” [Washington Post, 9/14/2010] Post media observer Howard Kurtz observes on Twitter that he is “amazed that Newt Gingrich said Obama has a Kenyan view of politics. Not exactly subtle.” [Media Matters, 9/13/2010] Many conservatives have long accused Obama of being un-American because of his Kenyan ancestry (see February 25, 2008, August 1, 2008 and After, October 8-10, 2008, June 29, 2009, and August 11, 2009).

Kathleen Parker, a conservative columnist who is highly critical of the Forbes article depicting President Obama as a ‘Kenyan sympathizer.’ [Source: Crooks and Liars]Forbes Magazine encounters a firestorm of criticism due to its publication of a cover story alleging President Obama is driven by “anti-colonial” sentiments garnered from his Kenyan father (see September 12, 2010). The story was written by Dinesh D’Souza, a prominent conservative author and pundit, and has been praised and reiterated by conservative politician Newt Gingrich (see September 12, 2010 and After). White House: 'New Low' for Forbes - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says of the article: “It’s a stunning thing, to see a publication you would see in a dentist’s office, so lacking in truth and fact. I think it represents a new low.” He asks, “Did they not fact-check this at all, or did they fact-check it and just willfully ignore it?” In response, the magazine releases a statement saying: “Dinesh D’Souza’s cover story was presented as an analysis of how the president thinks. No facts are in contention. Forbes stands by the story.” D’Souza says that his article is based on a “psychological theory,” but insists, “the idea that Obama has roots that are foreign is not an allegation, it’s a statement of fact.” Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz notes that Obama’s father abandoned his family when Obama was two years old, and Obama only saw his father once more after that. Gibbs says that D’Souza’s article is another illustration of the fact that there is “no limit to innuendo” against the president. Forbes, he says, “left the facts on the cutting-room floor.” [Washington Post, 9/16/2010]Columbia Journalism Review: 'Singularly Disgusting' and 'Racist' - The Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) calls the D’Souza article “a fact-twisting, error-laden piece of paranoia” and “the worst kind of smear journalism—a singularly disgusting work.” Reviewer Ryan Chittum writes: “Forbes for some reason gives Dinesh D’Souza the cover and lots of space to froth about the notion popular in the right-wing fever swamps that Obama is an ‘other’; that he doesn’t think like ‘an American,’ that his actions benefit foreigners rather than Amurricans. It’s too kind to call this innuendo. It’s far too overt for that.… This is loathsome stuff. And, again, it’s the cover story of one of the three big mainstream financial magazines.” Chittum continues: “The veneer of respectability, if you can call it that, that D’Souza and Forbes put on this noxious near-McCarthyite junk is that Obama is an ‘anticolonialist.’ It’s thin gruel. And, hey—I’m an anticolonialist, too. And so were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the rest of the gang.” He concludes, “Forbes has shamed itself with this one.” [Columbia Journalism Review, 9/13/2010] D’Souza responds to the CJR review by accusing Chittum of being one of what he calls the “confirmed Obamorons, who are only satisfied with hosannas and genuflections before the Anoin[t]ed One.” Chittum responds with a more detailed dissection of the lies, errors, and misinformation in the article, and concludes: “D’Souza denies in his blog post that the piece is racist, but of course it is. Indeed, it’s racist at its rotten core. That’s the whole point. You can’t write stuff like ‘Incredibly, the US is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s,’ and credibly assert that it’s not racist.… That Forbes gave the cover of its mainstream magazine to this piece will be a black mark on its reputation for a long, long time.” [Columbia Journalism Review, 9/16/2010]Washington Post Columnist: 'Big Gob of Gibberish' - Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson calls D’Souza’s article “a big gob of gibberish,” reading like something written by “one of those conspiracy theorists who believe the CIA is controlling our brain waves.” The article “makes assertion after assertion that is plainly, demonstrably unsupported,” he continues. [Washington Post, 9/14/2010]Post Columnist: 'There's Nothing Here of Any Benefit' - Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker says that D’Souza has “jump[ed] the shark” with his article, and asks sarcastically: “What’s next? Obama is an extraterrestrial pod deposited on Planet Earth to occupy a human shell and get elected leader of the free world so that he can lull the population into complacent dependency in advance of a full invasion of body snatchers?” She labels the article a “Republican revenge fantasy” and concludes: “It’s time to move on, gentlemen. There’s nothing here of any benefit, whatsoever.” [Washington Post, 9/15/2010]Media Matters: 'Completely Ridiculous' - The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters calls D’Souza’s arguments “completely ridiculous… an impressive combination of factual distortions and twisted logic.” [Media Matters, 9/12/2010] Author Eric Boehlert, a Media Matters contributor, asks if Forbes believes so strongly in the story as to give it the cover, why won’t the magazine defend it? He writes: “I think the Obama cover story has done extraordinary damage to the Forbes brand. But I’d actually respect the magazine if someone—anyone—on staff in a position of power had the courage to come forward and be held accountable for, or even try to argue on behalf of, the D’Souza train wreck.” [Media Matters, 9/16/2010]

The progressive media watchdog organization Media Matters disproves a number of “factual” claims in a recent article by conservative author Dinesh D’Souza, who claims that President Obama is driven by “anticolonial” rage sparked by his alleged identification with his Kenyan father (see September 12, 2010). Media Matters notes the following: D’Souza claims that Obama “supported the conditional release” of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the “Lockerbie Bomber,” because he sees al-Megrahi as a “fellow anticolonialist,” when in reality the Obama administration informed Scotland that it opposed al-Megrahi’s release. D’Souza claims that Obama supports “oil drilling off the coast of Brazil but not in America,” in the form of a $2 billion Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank loan to Brazil for exploratory drilling. In reality, the Obama administration had no say in the Ex-Im’s decision, and all five members of the bank’s board of directors were Bush administration appointees. (Forbes will conduct a fact-check after publication that garners harsh criticism from the bank over D’Souza’s misrepresentation of facts—see September 23-24, 2010.) D’Souza claims that Obama spent the first 17 years of his life “in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Pakistan.” D’Souza admits that he erred in this claim, as Obama never visited Pakistan until he was 20, and then only for three weeks. D’Souza claims that Obama’s June 2010 speech in response to the Gulf oil spill did not focus on cleanup strategies, but instead lambasted the US for its outsized oil consumption. While Obama did mention America’s disproportionate oil consumption, the central focus of his speech was the federal government’s response to the spill. (Forbes will correct this error and acknowledge that Obama’s speech indeed focused on cleaning up the oil spill—see September 23-24, 2010.) D’Souza claims that the 2009 economic stimulus (see November 18, 2008, February 10, 2009, February 13, 2009, February 17, 2009, February 23, 2009, February 28, 2009, March 9, 2009, April 9, 2009, April 16, 2009, June 9, 2009, and August 9, 2009) failed to reduce unemployment; the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has stated that unemployment would be as much as 1.8 percent higher without the stimulus, numbering up to 3.3 million people who would not have jobs. Private analysts such as the Council of Economic Advisers agree with the CBO’s assessment. D’Souza claims that a controversial New York City Islamic center, which he calls a “mosque,” is to be built “near the site where terrorists in the name of Islam brought down the World Trade Center… at Ground Zero.” In reality, the proposed Islamic community center, Cordoba House (later renamed Park51), is two city blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center. D’Souza claims Obama does not believe in “American exceptionalism,” and says that Obama’s dreams are not “the American dreams,” but “something else… certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders.” In reality, Obama has said time and again that he unequivocally believes in American exceptionalism, and has repeatedly stated his pride in being an American. D’Souza claims that Obama sees his father as a “hero” who “represented a great and noble cause.” In reality, Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, offered a largely critical portrait of Obama’s father. As Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz notes, “[T]hat book describes a young man’s struggle to understand his African roots and the father he never really knew, and offers a largely critical portrait of the Harvard-educated man who left his family.” Media Matters cites numerous other historians and reviewers who read Obama’s memoir as being highly critical of his father. As Reason Magazine’s Tim Cavanaugh wrote on the day D’Souza’s article was published, the memoir is “a narrative of Obama’s non-relationship with his father,” and continued, “[T]here is no evidence for the claim that the elder Obama bequeathed his son a coherent or even a partial political philosophy.” D’Souza claims that Obama opposes US military action in Afghanistan, because of his “anticolonial” bent. In reality, Obama campaigned on the idea that the US invasion of Afghanistan was an “absolutely vital” response to 9/11, and has made statements to that effect as far back as October 2001. As president, Obama has increased troop levels in Afghanistan and has said that US “security is at stake in Afghanistan.” D’Souza claims that Obama views “free market” as “code words for economic plunder,” saying that Obama views “the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America.” In reality, Obama has repeatedly praised the free market, and has consistently supported America’s large and small businesses in his economic policies. [Media Matters, 9/16/2010]

Shikha Dalmia. [Source: Hip Hop Republican (.com)]Forbes columnist Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst at the conservative Reason Foundation, lambasts a recent article in Forbes by conservative author Dinesh D’Souza, in which D’Souza claimed President Obama is secretly driven by a pro-Kenyan, anti-colonial world view (see September 12, 2010). Dalmia writes with some sardonicism, “Writers these days are supposed to cultivate a niche, and D’Souza seems to have homesteaded the intellectual goofiness spot all for himself.” Even most right-wing pundits, Dalmia observes, have refused to countenance D’Souza’s tract, with the notable exception of Fox News’s Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich (see September 12, 2010 and After). She briefly recounts some of the many factual errors, misrepresentations, and outright lies that fill D’Souza’s article (see September 16, 2010), and then takes issue with one of D’Souza’s central theses: that Obama is trying to help poorer countries at the expense of the American economy. Dalmia writes: “If Obama were seriously motivated by a moral desire to protect poor countries from being ruined by excessive American consumption then his biggest priority would be to rein in this consumption. But that is the exact opposite of what he has done since assuming office. His entire economic agenda is one big and desperate attempt to boost American consumption. He propped up financial institutions and increased government oversight of them not to use them as a tool for some future global redistribution—or ‘decolonization’—as D’Souza bizarrely suggests, but for far more mundane purposes: making easy credit available for American businesses to grow their way out of the recession. Likewise, the notorious cash-for-clunkers program was nothing if not a scheme to stimulate auto consumption. And ObamaCare’s individual mandate practically forces Americans to consume more health care. All of this seems more in line with Keynesian stimulation—rather than Kenyan anti-colonialism.… D’Souza’s thesis is so obviously flawed that one has to wonder what caused him to propose it. Accusing Obama of Keynesiasm or socialism or crony-capitalism—as the rest of us Obama critics are doing—is damning enough. Why does D’Souza need to go further?” Dalmia concludes by pointing out that D’Souza seems to obsess over the polygamy among the Kenyan members of Obama’s family. In what Dalmia calls D’Souza’s “repeated… gratuitous digs” at the practice, she asks, “What is the point of this except to remind Americans that Obama is a Muslim—the most dreaded of ‘others’?” Dalmia concludes: “Ultimately, D’Souza’s rumination reveals less about how Obama thinks and more about how D’Souza thinks. It shows not that Obama is motivated by malice toward America, but D’Souza is motivated by malice toward Obama. How pathetic.” [Forbes, 9/17/2010]

Forbes Magazine, after weathering weeks of intense criticism for its recent cover story by conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza alleging that President Obama is driven by “Kenyan anticolonialism” (see September 12, 2010 and September 12, 2010 and After), agrees to an unusual post-publication fact-checking process to see if, as many have alleged, many of D’Souza’s allegations are erroneous (see September 16, 2010). The agreement was reached after Forbes’s Washington bureau chief met with White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, though Forbes spokeswoman Monie Begley says the decision to fact-check the article was made because of the “general clamor in the news media” and not because of White House pressure. [New York Times, 9/24/2010] During the meeting, Gibbs asked the bureau chief if the magazine bothered to fact-check D’Souza’s article. [Media Matters, 9/25/2010] Forbes has already issued one minor correction to the article on its Web site, noting that D’Souza had “slightly misquoted” President Obama in a speech he’d made about the Gulf oil spill; D’Souza claimed that Obama did not focus on “cleanup strategies,” but Forbes now acknowledges that “Obama’s speech did discuss concrete measures to investigate the oil spill and bring it under control.” D’Souza’s article was drawn from an upcoming book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, to be published by conservative publishing house Regnery on October 4; Regnery publicist Kathleen Sweetapple says in a statement, “[T]here are a couple of minor errors that are completely inconsequential; what the critics are fuming about are not factual errors but disagreements of interpretation.” Forbes staffers contact the Export-Import Bank to check D’Souza’s claim that the Obama administration had directly supported the bank’s decision to lend $2 billion to Petrobras, Brazil’s state-owned oil company, for offshore drilling. D’Souza wrote that Obama supported the deal “not so oil ends up in the US. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.” Observers have noted that Obama had no say in the bank’s decision, and all five of the bank’s board of directors are Bush-era appointees. As part of the bank’s response, senior vice president Kevin Varney posts a comment on D’Souza’s blog highly critical of the author’s decision not to contact the bank before publishing the article. “I received a call yesterday from Nathan Verdi, a fact checker at Forbes, who was calling to fact check your article after it was published,” Varney writes. ”(Is this how journalism works now?)” Varney tells a New York Times reporter that the Petrobras loan “was begun in 2008 with career staffers and approved in 2009 by five Bush-appointed board members.” Deals such as this one, Varney continues, do not usually rise to the level of presidential awareness. For D’Souza to cite the deal as evidence of “an anticolonial, Kenyan ideology” on Obama’s part is “preposterous, it’s false, and it’s wrong.” [New York Times, 9/24/2010]

Mike Huckabee (R-AR), the former governor of Arkansas, currently a host on Fox News and a potential 2012 presidential candidate, speculates that President Obama may have been born in Kenya. If this were true, Obama would not be eligible to be president. Huckabee states, incorrectly, that Obama grew up in Kenya. Huckabee is appearing on a radio show hosted by conservative Steve Malzberg. The host brings up the subject of Obama’s “controversial” birth certificate (see July 20, 2008, August 15, 2008, October 8-10, 2008, October 16, 2008 and After, November 10, 2008, December 3, 2008, August 1-4, 2009, May 7, 2010, Shortly Before June 28, 2010, and Around June 28, 2010), as recently revived by billionaire Donald Trump (see February 10, 2011), and asks, “Don’t you think we deserve to know more about this man?” Huckabee responds: “I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American. When he gave the bust back to the Brits, the bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British (see June 29, 2009). But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.” PolitiFact, the nonpartisan, political fact-checking organization sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times, believes that Huckabee is echoing discredited claims recently made by conservative author Dinesh D’Souza, who accused Obama of being an “anti-colonialist” and covert supporter of Kenyan extremists (see September 12, 2010, September 12, 2010 and After, September 12, 2010 and After, September 16, 2010, September 17, 2010, September 23, 2010, and September 23-24, 2010). Contrary to Huckabee’s assertions, Obama did not grow up in Kenya. He had virtually no contact with his Kenyan father and never met his paternal grandfather, whom D’Souza wrote had such a powerful influence on him. Instead, Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. After the interview on Malzberg’s show, Huckabee corrects his error, saying: “On Monday, while on Steve Malzberg’s radio show on New York’s WOR Radio, I was asked about the President Obama’s birth certificate issue. In my answer, I simply misspoke when I alluded to President Obama growing up in ‘Kenya’ and meant to say Indonesia.” PolitiFact notes that in the past, Huckabee has warned against buying into the idea that Obama is not a US citizen, affirmed Obama’s Christianity, and praised Obama as a role model for fathers (see February 23, 2011). [St. Petersburg Times, 2/28/2011]

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